I am listening to Steve Job’s biography written by Walter Isaacson. Here is one thing that has really resonated with me as I have listened along.

Steve Jobs never shipped anything that he personally wasn’t 100% happy with or he wouldn’t personally purchase himself.

So the thought occurred to me, why do I ship, publish, execute, on my products / services I am not 100% happy with?

The book shares several stories where Steve delayed shipping his products in order to ensure it was done perfect the first time. The most memorable story is regarding the original iPhone. If you remember the original iPhone had glass covering almost the entire surface of the phone, which by the way was revolutionary in that day. However, according to Job’s biographer this wasn’t the case prior to shipping the product. In the middle of the night Steve’s top designer called him and told him it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t quite right. The glass wasn’t right. So you know what they did? They went back to the drawing board and figured out the right way to do it before they shipped. They didn’t want to ship a subpar product; they wanted to ship the best product right the first time. Even though it caused a great deal of work and delay, they got it right the first time

How do you apply this in your own context? Let’s learn from Steve Jobs, let’s make sure we do our job right the first time before we ship that product, before we run that event, before we write that next blog post. If we wouldn’t personally want to buy it, read it, or attend it, why would anyone else want to?